Issue 10

Winter 2014

Jagged

She’s stubbed out her last cigarette, we marvel that she managed it; a sixty-a-day inveterate, a Marlboro-mad smoking stick who craved not only nicotine and the repertoire of motions, from hand to mouth and back again essential to devotions, but had augmentedthe habit to flatten flames that burnt within by applying lighted nub-ends to the stubbornness of skin; to steady flight and cushion fall, and obviate oblivion; to moderate the mercury that’s untamed by Lithium. She caught me glancing at her arms for pale uneven patches, rolled her sleeves and turned the palms, her burns exchanged for slashes; the scars of broken beer glasses, scores of jewelled and jaggededges, brooches, blades and coloured plastics, crampons spiking every crevice.At the weekly self-harm classes they will sterilise the weapons with a sigh at further damage and an eye upon infections. She plays the role of maverick and declines the antisepsis for the thrill of fraying fabric and maintaining daring habits like the risk of sexual intercourse without the prophylactics.